On God: An Uncommon Conversation by Norman Mailer, Michael Lennon Page A

course, it can be done, you can always inject some warped form of democracy into a country if you have enough troops and are ready to ignore the cost.
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    I want to come back one more time to love and courage. Here I’m going to use Henry James—his idea of the greatest human act, one that required both love and courage, is an act of renunciation. At the heart of all his novels is an act of renunciation, and usually it’s a quiet act, not even an act you take credit for.
    It’s suspicious in James, because James’s life is a study in renunciation. I distrust authors, especially very good authors, when they lay out a full program for their characters that is covertly supporting their own work. James had too little passion to get near to people he didn’t understand. He worked out an immensely elaborate and beautiful art, but it’s full of renunciation. And we pay the price. If he had been greater as a writer, Americans would be that much better off. James is not much of a guide to the modern world. He’s a marvelous guide when you’re younger to understanding some of the subtly disproportionate things that go on in high society. He’s a great guide to a very limited mountain pass that few people will ever have to traverse. But renunciation did him in. If James had had a few passionate love affairs and had been able to write about them—
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    He saw them as antithetical. It’s the life/art division. James believed that you can have a life
or
you can have the art, and I’m going to have the art.
    Look, I agree, and that does not surprise me, particularly now that I’m old. Recently, I’ve been saying that if you want to be a serious novelist, a large element of it is monastic. It’s a dull life in the daily sense.
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    That’s very Jamesian.
    You don’t have a lot of fun. You have to give up the idea of fun.
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    Renunciation serves art. That was his dictum.
    In that sense, I do agree. But there is renunciation as a working sacrifice, a temporary renunciation, and there’s visceral renunciation, which can amputate a novelist’s taproot.
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    He should have broken off the reservation once in a while? Gone off on a toot?
    Yes. Once you’ve had a wild time or two, you can often support your imagination for a long time. In the harshest sense, you can say the trouble with Henry James is he never fucked another human.
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    I have one last question, which I think you’ve already answered. Your position on Jesus seems to be very similar to the position of the Muslims: They revere him as a teacher, a prophet, a guide—they do not recognize him as anything special beyond one in a long line—
    No. I wouldn’t say I have that point of view. It’s possible, to me, that Jesus is the Son of God. If God wants to inspire humankind, which is after all His Creation, why couldn’t He, why wouldn’t He, send a part of Himself to humankind? I can accept the miracle—miracles don’t bother me. What irks me is the bric-a-brac put up to surround the miracle.
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    So the incarnation—the Word made Flesh is something—
    The Word made Flesh gives me trouble. The Gospel of John makes me uneasy. I think John, more than Matthew, Mark, or Luke, created some of the unhappier aspects of the Church. The notion of the Word made Flesh can be reversed—there’s the danger. The Flesh can be turned into the Word, can become injunctions, direct communication, usually from above straight down. What is totalitarianism but the Word being implanted in the Flesh?
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    But John said you have to believe Revelation, it’s all there, there’s no other way. Whereas